SeaDragon and Microsoft

If you’ve been to RLG’s Annual Meeting at the Huntington last year, you may remember Blaise Agüera y Arcas – he wooed the crowd with a demonstration of his technology “SeaDragon,” which allows seamless navigation and zooming into large sets of digital files. Several RLG members were so impressed that they committed to working with Blaise on the spot to test the applicability of his software to the cultural heritage environment. You can see a demo of this on his company’s website, although I have to make the disclaimer that the real thing is several magnitudes more impressive than the demo. Now Microsoft just announced that they have acquired SeaDragon as part of a new initiative called LiveLabs. On a whim, I called Blaise to congratulate him and see what this meant for the technology’s future – he was clearly excited about what’s happening, but also told me he’s not at liberty to discuss any details about the arrangement with Microsoft at this point.

Looks like our “Spotlight on Innovation” program at the annual meeting did pick a winner! We’ll keep you posted as we learn more.

UPDATE: Looks as if now things are now officially official – Microsoft acquired SeaDragon, and Blaise and all other SeaDragon employees will now be on MS payroll.